Originally Posted by
FODPlod
Hardly surprising if you watched the committee hearings. A typical example of PAC Chairwoman Margaret Hodges's aggressive antagonism and tenuous grasp of the issues was her insistence that our EMALS (which has successfully launched aircraft during trials on land) was not only unproven technology but "...a different system" to that used by the Americans because our carriers will only have two of them whereas USS Gerald R. Ford will have four.
Exactly the same point can be made about the PAC enquiry into Typhoon which included some cost calculations (gleefully repeated by some of the more egregious members of the Phoenix Think Tank and a few people elsewhere who ought to know better) conjured up on an iPhone
in the evidence session...
That wasn't the only problem with that enquiry either, IIRC.
The MoD's procurement may not be fit for purpose, but there's a emerging trend suggesting that the PAC under Hodge isn't either, in stark contrast to what it was in the days of Edward Leigh (it was him who used to chair it, wasn't it?). Some of the defence questions are so stupid and/or the answers not understood or misinterpreted that you have to ask if this occurs in all of their hearings.